Does Time really exist, or not?

Some people think that this question can never be answered once and for
all, or that 'Time' something that by its
very nature will always leave us humans only able to guess and speculate about
its nature and deepest mysteries.

This book has one single central point to make, and it
is that there are no mysteries or paradoxes about Time at all.

This is because, scientifically, the idea that ‘time’
exists - in any way other than as a useful human notion or idea - can be shown
to be completely unfounded.

Party Time.

Ok, here’s the thing. In a casual conversation anyone can
say ‘well you know really, ‘Time’ doesn’t actually exist at all… it’s just a man-made
idea.’

What usually follows is the initial acceptance that ‘Time’
is just a really useful human notion or tool. Followed by a couple of questions
about who’s read Steven Hawking’s book ‘A brief History of Time’, and how
everyone who did thought it was great but didn’t get past the first chapter. Then
a brief chat about Einstein’s theory of relativity may follow, and a discussion
about what you would want to do if you could travel through time into the past
or the future.

Somewhere in the discussion there might also be an
observation along the lines of ‘I remember exactly what I did last week, and I
can’t possibly predict exactly what I’ll be doing this time next year’, and ‘we
know people grow old and die and that they don’t come back’. So, it is
concluded that ‘Time obviously exists in some form’. From there the
conversation moves happily on to whether or not scientists can prove that ‘Time-travel’
is really possible, or may have even happened. And what would happen if you visited
next week just long enough to scribble down the lottery numbers and return. Or
if you went back in time a few decades and killed your own grandfather before
your dad was conceived, or tried to stop world war 2 by assassinating Hitler
for the good of mankind.

At this point I always think It’s funny not only how swiftly
the conversation can go from agreeing that ‘time is just a made up human idea’
to ‘can we travel through time’. It’s also interesting how no one ever seems
too worried about the moral issues of actually committing fraud or even murder,
let alone getting arrested, as long as they think they can get away with it
perfectly. And, I’m guessing, that we all think we’ll be allowed to keep our
time machine in the prison cell with us after any arrest so we can make our
escape at will.

And there we have it the conversation goes from ‘Time’ goes
from being ‘obviously just a man made idea to ‘it obviously really
existing’ and to us packing our suitcase’s for a guilt free, fraud based, trip
to the future, or a ‘parricide murder’ weekend somewhere in ‘the past’ all in a
few easy conversational steps. What's more, if we do discuss these inconsistencies
on the conversation the subject of time seems to get more and more complicated,
and this leads us to believe that ‘time’ as a real thing in the universe, and
not just a manmade idea, really must exist. Otherwise, how could it be so hard
to discuss and explain?

The problem with such superficial ‘cocktail party’ discussions
about time is that although they can be fun and lead to few minor insights they
will also naturally contain many very significant oversights and as is the very
nature of oversights that they will sneak unchecked into our model of the world,
misleading us and leaving us none the wiser about Time than when we first mentioned
the topic.

So, without a careful and structured approach to a subject
as puzzling as time one might as well be running blindly around a maze going
too fast, working without a plan and constantly losing track of where we even
started from, let alone where the exit might be. And so we are virtually
guaranteed not to stumble across the way out, and maybe even reach the
wrong conclusion that there isn’t a way out.

The sole purpose of this book is to show how the idea of
time can be shown to be just, and only an idea. An idea, notion, or mental tool
that is useful to us as we try to organise our lives in a universe of constant
change. But fundamentally not an idea that actually relates to some other real
and existing thing, such as a ‘fourth dimension’ or any other kind of phenomena
extra to just matter and motion, just existing and interacting ‘now’.

The quote from Albert Einstein at the start of this book comes
from a letter Einstein wrote to the bereaved widow of his close friend and
fellow scientist, Michele Angelo Besso.

Although Einstein suggests here that he and other physicists
are convinced that the fundamental distinctions of Time, the past, the present
and the future may be just ‘illusions’ his famous and ground breaking work on
the theory of relativity refers to ‘Time’ extensively throughout its pages. And
in his work Einstein doesn’t actually contest the existence of Time. Instead he
suggests that space and time are aspects of the same one thing, the entity that
he called ‘spacetime’.

One of Einstein’s main reasons for suspecting that the past
and the future may not be what they seem was probably because he knew, that the
laws of physics are generally agreed to be what is known as ‘Time reversible’.
What this means is that scientifically any mechanism, be it chemical, physical,
biological, electrical and so on, could in theory be made to operate
‘backwards’ just as well as it normally operates ‘forwards’. Although we never
see this happen, the apparent ‘time reversibility of the laws of nature’
literally means that in scientific
theory any process should be able to happen in any ‘direction’. A plant should
be able to ‘un-grow’ and ‘emit’ sunlight. A car engine could be forced to run
backwards, sucking in fumes through its exhaust pipe, and pumping clean air
into the atmosphere and ‘gasoline’ back into its tank. Broken vases should be
able to fly up off the floor and reform perfectly. Arrows should be able to fly
backwards through the air, and people should even be able to physically appear
younger and fitter. The only reason these kind of things do not happen is
because it is too complicated to ever arrange every atom in a complicated
system such that they are all simultaneously heading back in exactly the
opposite of their original direction all at once. But, in theory if we could do
so, we might see shattered vases spring up and reform, and so on.In other words, Einstein may have considered
that some, or all, of the future could in theory be reversed and become the
past. I.e. the distinctions between the past and the future might not really
exist, and so could be called ‘illusions’.

I hope to show that even this point of view is not the case,
and that the situation only seems complicated because in all conversations
about time we make the mistake of assuming things about its nature, without
proving them, and from there discussing ‘problems’ or possibilities that don’t
really exist.

For example, if we ask ‘could the pieces of a shattered vase
ever in theory spring up and reform?’The
question seems to be, are physical events ‘Time reversible’ or not? – But
there’s a problem with this question before we even start to try and answer it,
because whether you say ‘events may be time reversible’, or ‘may not be
time reversible’, you have already, automatically, agreed or assumed that Time ‘obviously’
exists.

When Einstein says he sees Time as a stubbornly persistent
illusion it suggests to me that he felt sure Time was not quite what it seemed
to be but also that he could not quiet explain away what it was that he did
observe. I believe his problem here may have been that he to felt that time
must at least exist in some form, and thus he just had to work out what that
form was. And so he seems to have thought that ‘one of the features of time, is
that the past, present and future were all the same thing in some way’.

What I am suggesting is that if anyone starts off by
assuming time exists in some way, and then tries to understand ‘time’, if they
are wrong they will never be able to see the truth. Or in other words ‘you
can’t get there from here’.

Einstein seems to have considered the approach that the
distinctions of time may be illusions. What I am suggesting is that there is no
such thing as time, and therefore no ‘distinctions of time’ to be illusions.
Instead I am suggesting that all there is in the universe is just what we see,
which is ‘matter’ existing, moving, and interacting ‘now’.

And by ‘now’ I don’t mean in a present moment which is
sandwiched between a future and a past, or a present moment that if moving
forwards through time. I mean ‘now’ as in what you can directly observe around
you as you read this –things just existing and moving.

It’s easy to suggest ‘every thing is just here now’, and at
first sight it may seem very naïve and incomplete, because any explanation
replacing time has to account for every observation or process we assume
involves time from ‘day to day’ observations up to and beyond Einstein’s own
theory of relativity. Thus it is the purpose of this book to show that just
matter and motion now, can re-explain all of this completely, without
exception.

The idea that ‘things just exist and move’ occurred to me when
right in the middle of a particularly long, hot and relaxing bath I suddenly
realised that ‘everyday’, ‘all day’ there is always a sunset constantly
happening!

This is fairly obvious, sunsets don’t just happen when you
and I are looking at them. People somewhere are constantly being pulled through
the sunset into the night in an endless procession as the earth rotates. If you
could look at how the earth is, and how it rotates from outer space you could
easily see that just as its constant rotation pulls people into the night through
the sunset on the opposite side of the globe people being pulled out of the
darkness of the earth’s shadow into the sunlight see this as a ‘sunrise
happening’.

While carefully thinking about this scenario various odd questions
started to arise in my mind, such as, if ‘sunset’ is a thing that is happening constantly
in a ‘place’ then how come we have to wait ‘until the sunset?’ And if the
sunset is always happening, is it a place that changes ‘over time’ or is it
always just happening ‘now’?’

As I considered these thoughts and ideas more and more I
realised that throughout the entire universe, literally every ‘where’ there
must be some ‘thing’ happening right now. And, along with everything else that
is happening everywhere, along with all the other change, all the stars forming
and decaying, all the planets and meteorites orbiting and colliding, all the
clouds, animals, plants and oceans on earth forming and collapsing, growing and
decaying, ebbing and flowing, along with all of this change, the contents
of my own mind were also changing, now.

From there I wondered, does all of this change have to
happen ‘over time’, or, could it all just be happening now?

Looking into this possibility very carefully, and logically
I came to the conclusion that much as we may think otherwise, the idea or
‘notion’ of Time is not actually needed to explain the way that everything
around us moves, changes, forms, decays and interacts.

Unlike other ‘books on time’ this work has one single
central point to make, which is that, probably to a greater extent than even
Einstein thought when he wrote to his friends widow, ‘Time’, really is
absolutely nothing other than ‘a stubbornly persistent illusion’.

This conclusion, ‘that time is entirely nonexistent’ seems
very clear to me, particularly given that all we constantly see is ourselves
and other things just moving and changing. But, just saying time does not
exist, and proving that it doesn’t, are two very different things, and
explaining ‘timelessness’ from scratch in a simple conversation is almost
impossible.

The good news is that like most other stubbornly persistent
things, the illusions related to time can be dispelled with some thoughtful
methodical and equally persistent effort hence the writing of this book.

There are many books about Time available. Some aim directly
to explain the nature of Time, as if it most certainly exists, and move on from
there, typically highlighting a few paradoxes on the way. Some books offer
titles suggesting they try to explain the birth or origin of time. Others how
time itself may come to an end, or explore many different possibilities as to
what Time may or may not be, and so occasionally have a section or two on how some
religions or philosophies might believe there is no such thing as time.

But such views or discussions about them are never much more
than indistinct ideas with no solid reasoning around them that can be shown to
be right or wrong. Such chapters generally lead to some vague point of view ‘that
time may simultaneously kind of exist’ and ‘kind of not exist’ depending on how
you look at it. And so time is left as ‘still at least kind of existing’ and if
anything the matter is more formless or mysterious than before.

The one thing all of the books I have on time have in common
is that none of them has a single section covering the actual history of how
mankind thinks he dis-covered[1]
Time, followed by a rigorous proof that ‘Time’ a real and existing thing was
discovered, and not that just a useful mental tool, ‘notion’, or convention was
constructed!

Conversely, in failing to prove the apparent discovery was
real and that time is more than just an idea such works also sidestep having a
section rigorously examining the possibility that time may scientifically be
shown to be only an idea.

This book differs fundamentally from all other books on time
because its sole purpose is to show how we can scientifically and logically explain
Time entirely in terms of its existing only a human idea, notion or
mental tool, and not existing at all in any other form.

This exploration has to be in book form because the
complexity of the idea of time means that any casual discussion on the subject
never reaches any solid conclusions, for example in conversation many people
bring up the idea that ‘Time is a man made notion or idea that we use to help
us understand and organise our lives. But then we often go on to discuss the
possibilities of slowing time down or ideas such as Time travel. Essentially
asking the rather odd question ‘can we travel through something in the real
world that we just agreed is nothing but an idea in our minds?’

The essence of my 'proof ' of timelessness rests on one critical question -

"if things could just exist and move - would that explain all that we see?'(See...∆The Past.)